Title & Author:

Absurd thinking : between art and design / Allan Wexler with the close collaboration of Ellen Wexler ; edited by Ashley Simone ; essays by Patricia C. Phillips, Sean Anderson, and Michele Calzavara.

Publication:

Zürich, Switzerland : Lars Müller Publishers, [2017]
©2017

Description:

295 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), plans ; 29 cm

Notes:
"Allan Wexler's career resists easy classification. He is best known as a hands-on maker. He explores the fields of architecture and design as an artist. In the late 1960s Wexler was an early member of the group of architects and artists who questioned the perceived divide between art and the design disciplines. They called themselves "nonarchitects, antiarchitects, and paper architects." Throughout his 45-year career he has reevaluated our most basic assumptions about our relationship to what we build, why we build, and how it affects our daily lives. Wexler's works explore the poetics of space and the nonfunction in the functional, how we create ritual, the power of the handcrafted in the time of digital, and the use of chance and the value of accident, our body's relationship to the built, and our roots from the primitive hut"--Http://www.allanwexlerstudio.com/now.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 290-292) and index.
On the fine art of applied art -- Assignments in purpose / Patricia C. Phillips -- Process as performance / Sean Anderson -- Abstractions : the practic of process, misusing tools, useful accidents, and time-based design -- Landscape: first shelters and simple acts on and of the land -- Private space : personal spaces and familiar domestic rituals -- Public places: choreographing interactions and causing disruptions -- Meditations on habitation / Michele Calzavara -- Biography.

Summary:

"Absurd Thinking: Between Art and Design is a survey of work by artist/architect Allan Wexler. The book features projects developed across the artist's forty-five-year career that mediate the gap between fine and applied art using the mediums of architecture, sculpture, photography, painting, and drawing. Wexler's works can be broadly described as tactile poetry composed by re-framing the ordinary. They sustain a narrative about landscape, nature, and the built environment that highlights the intriguing and surprising characteristics latent in the elements and rituals that pervade daily life. Wexler's work is sometimes functional sometimes theoretical, and often a hybrid of the two. In all cases, it demonstrates a commitment to re-evaluating basic assumptions about the human relationship to the built and natural environments. Organized thematically across four categories--Abstraction, Landscape, Private Space and Public Places--this book is a richly illustrated cross-section of Wexler's multi-scale, multi-media work featuring his own writings, narratives and reflections"--Publisher's description.

ISBN:

9783037785164 (hardback)
3037785160 (hardback)

Subject:

Wexler, Allan, 1949-
Furniture design United States.
Sculpture and architecture United States.
Architecture in art.
Meubles Design États-Unis.
Sculpture et architecture États-Unis.
Architecture dans l'art.
Sculpture and architecture.
Furniture design.
United States.

Form/genre:

Catalogs.

Added entries:

Simone, Ashley, editor.
Wexler, Ellen, editor.
Phillips, Patricia C., 1952- writer of supplementary textual content.
Anderson, Sean, 1972- writer of supplementary textual content.
Calzavara, Michele, writer of supplementary textual content.
Wexler, Allan, 1949- Works. Selections.

Allan Wexler, absurd thinking, between art and design

Holdings:

Location: Library main 294679
Call No.: BIB 240469
Status: Available